This Is How It Ends

Robert lives in North East England. He works in Recruitment by day, and is usually to be found knee deep in a pile of books as a reader and reviewer by night. He has recently signed with The Blair Partnership, and his debut crime novel, What Falls Between the Cracks was released in Spring 2018.

Raven Books

RRP: £12.99

Released: January 25 2018

HBK

It begins with two women, and a death that they agree to cover up. It was an accident, after all, wasn’t it? Atmospheric and thought provoking, this latest crime thriller is as prescient as the shadow of the tragedy that was Grenfell Tower.

Ella Riordanis a writer and community activist, full of passion and fire for her causes. Currently Ella is living in a “squat” that the owners want cleared to make way for a luxury housing development. Ella remains with the last of the squatters to help them from the owners (who are trying to remove the last of the urban dwellers), so they can proceed by replacing it for costly condominiums for the wealthy, gentrifying the area to push out the poor, and favour the powerful.

After a party in the squat, Ella runs in terror to her friend Molly for help. There is a dead body in Ella’s flat. Molly convinces Ella that calling the Police would be a terrible mistake, as the Boys in Blue would never believe her innocence (based on her past activism and police file). So together Molly and Ella covertly hide the body in the squat’s life shaft, and a secret between the two women is formed.

The narrative weaves between the relationship between these two women, almost as if Mother and Daughter, their pasts, and now their current situation. They need to stick together if they’re going to get through this, however when Molly hears that Ella was heard arguing with a man the night of the party, fractures begin to appear.

Readers of Eva Dolan’s Zigic and Ferreira series will find that This Is How It Ends contains the same narrative style, the same terse pace and the splicing of chapters together intertwining the alternating timelines.

Though one of the most intriguing themes that Eva Dolan’s work contains is that of trust; in the terms of who you can trust, and who you can’t, as well as how the truth can be striated by lies hidden over time. These themes are most evident in this dark and thought provoking crime thriller, which at times is as prescient as it is gripping.